[ Sorry for the slight wait. :/ ]

His sick heart was pounding painfully in his chest, the silence a weight upon his ears. There was no vehement cry to answer his demand for her attention, no swift charge of otherworldly feet—barely any reaction at all, just the slow turn of a small head. The shape lumbered closer, slow and unsteady, weaving drunkenly; it should've been less terrifying than the fleet-footed child with his slavering jaws full of sharp, sharp teeth, but.. something in the swaying rhythm of her movements, in the slow, deliberate approach, chilled him to the bone. The determination of her pale eyes. Death comes slowly, his tired mind hummed, and Irma started yelling something in the back of his head. Roughly it translated to your stupidity never ceases to amaze me do you plan on giving me a heart attack I'll kill you so you better survive you idiot. He drew a deep, cold breath. It stung his throat, it stung his lungs, but if this would be the end, he'd want to have taken one good, last sip of winter air.

Ah, brother...

Closer and closer the unsteady girl came, and she was so small; if it wasn't for her distorted shape, for the dull hunger in her eyes.. would she have been frightening at all? Step by step she dragged herself closer, and more and more Mauja saw of her details, of the odds and ends sticking out of her soft, rotting flesh, of gaping holes bleeding dark liquids he had no desire neither to smell nor identify.

It was, in all honesty, its own brand of horror show: not the quick, messy death of a wolf, but slow decay, torture and agony, the promise of a long, long wait until the rotting flesh fell apart, nothing but bones and a mess of meat...

He shuddered. Steeled himself; ears flat against his muscular neck. Adrenaline breathed a semblance of strength into him.

Something pearly white formed by her side, a stray ray of moonlight in a darkened world—it could be nothing good, summoned by the side of hell's own creation. Like snow in the wind it rippled forth, so much fleeter than its dark shadow, leaping straight for him. Mauja tossed his head up, brain rattling around painfully in its fever-warm cranium; the dull ache of fever dumbed him, and a blessing saved him. The blue light of his holly branch flared up, pulsed forth like a gentle shield of all things good and of light. The only sickness there was room for in him, was nature's own.

He'd backed half a step downwards, hind hooves planted firmly among the pebbles and rocks, widened nostrils breathing out defiance just as his heart pulsed life. Come, come, come he whispered under his breath, repeating the mantra, trying to figure out what she would do—this was no lumbering charge, and once she was down in the caves.. how on earth was he going to get her anywhere? Why had he thought he could be in control of this?

Shit, I'm an idiot.

You're dumb, Mauja. Thanks, Irma.

"You," her voice said, all darkness and rough edges mingling along the edges of her words, "You and your kind. You deserve this, not me." Her presence was a menace to every sense, sight and sound and smell, and he glared at her with icy blue eyes. Does she know how extremely easy prey I am? The thought rang through his mind, somehow blinding him to her attack; she'd been so slow, so cumbersome, that he hadn't expected the sudden lunge and promise of death.

They couldn't fill him with their sickness, but they could bite his flesh all the same.

Mauja, stupidly instinctual, began to rise on his hindquarters to protect himself, lifting towards the darkened sky above—but it was a mistake, an idiotic reaction when on a sloping path. Her teeth, her hot vile breath, was against his tucked forelimbs, biting at his sweat-gray pelt; he struck out, once, to smash a front hoof against her shoulder, and then, in some odd way, it was over, because he fell off the face of the world.

She wasn't there for just a nip. She was there for the destruction, the mayhem, his demise, and balanced so precariously at such an angle to the world, he had no chance to save himself when her small mass crashed gracelessly into his bared abdomen. The world spun around his head, the air rushed past his down-turned back; he tried to sit down, but he was already falling, and his drained muscles wouldn't obey.

There was nothing to catch himself on. Just him and the air and nauseating feeling of nothing all around him.

Then he, sort of, slammed the upside of his left shoulder into the rough wall, and then it was his withers being scraped raw against it for the barest moment; his right side touched down, barrel first, on the hard path, and finally, he slammed the length of his neck and head onto it.

In that moment, he wanted to die. His spirit plunged ten feet through the solid ground, swinging right back up again, back into his body. If he could, he would die, to escape the nauseating ringing in his head, the throbbing of his entire side—the way the world spun, mercilessly. He wanted to lay in the dark forever, certain that if he opened his eyes, his guts would turn themselves inside out and his brain would fall out through his ears.

If only he could lay there, forever. If only there wasn't some deformed pony nearby wanting to kill him.

Oh, the things I do...

With a death groan rattling out through his chapped lips Mauja did the unthinkable: he opened his eyes. The world was a blur; the floor spun just beneath his eyes, a dizzying display of shadows and different levels of depth. To him, it seemed he lay half in the ground already, a hazy outline of the rocky floor cutting through his knees. Maybe he should recommend hitting his head really hard to d'Artagnan? This seemed to be his kind of thing, and maybe he'd have something to avoid the damn headache with.

So far, so good. His head felt as if it was about to split open, and his vision was full of swimming black dots, and his right ear was actually ringing. It was a small miracle he hadn't cracked any bone. Gasping, Mauja found he still had four legs, and somehow began to right himself. He heaved himself up on his front feet alright, but found he had no balance, and his descent was very unceremonious: he crashed his sore right side along the wall for balance, feet skidding over loose pebbles and rough edges, and when he finally came down on the fairly even ground he nearly stumbled and fell on his face. Instead, he just sort of crow-hopped until he found some semblance of equilibrium: all four feet planted wide apart, tail out, head low, nose nearly touching the ground. Breaths rattled in and out, and the world kept spinning alarmingly.

And he'd lost the pony. Damn, where was it? His nose was full of its morbid stench, but if he moved in the slightest, to flick and ear to listen, to turn his head to try and see, he knew he'd fall over.

And then, he'd be in even deeper shit.